The Long Game

The Republican noise-making over IRS dumbassery always was a charlatan's game as far as creating a "scandal" out of the dumbassery went, but that wasn't the entire point of it anyway. The entire point of it was to paralyze -- or, at least, intimidate -- the IRS into granting tax exemptions to the people that the Republicans wanted to have them.

Billing itself as a voters' rights organization, True the Vote was involved in trying to clean up voter rolls in some states, in deterring fraud in Texas elections and in verifying signatures in the Wisconsin governor recall election. The group found out earlier this year it was part of a batch of hundreds of applications that the IRS had been delaying and subjecting to intrusive scrutiny, and it sued to force the agency to approve its application. The decision to approve the group's application does not end the matter, according to Cleta Mitchell, lead lawyer in the lawsuit. She said the IRS still needs to answer for the costs and damages that resulted from the three-year delay, and for probing for information that the IRS's own internal auditor says wasn't necessary to make a determination. "This lawsuit is about getting to the truth and we are not going to stop until we find out the answers to these and many other questions," Ms. Mitchell said.

The blog would like to not for the record that True The Vote is a ballot-security outfit that absolutely is not engaged in voter-suppression even though all of its efforts result coincidentally in fewer people being able to vote. Thank you.

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